I'm back!!!!

A return to Substack with a solid goal..To find the life that fits..

I’ve been missing in action.

A year of stressful house moves, EHCP’s and health issues has overwhelmed and left my typey fingers redundant with exhaustion. I feel like a weary traveller returning from a perilous journey of discovery, emaciated and unrecognisable but ready to indulge in life’s glorious fruit once again.

My initial goal of what this little Substack space would be became clouded by my confusion over what life needs to look like for us and my mind hasn’t stopped pondering this existential question. Unschooling has been amazing, healing, but quite simply we need more support.

Home education became increasingly challenging for us with children with vastly different needs, one wanting to be at home, the other wanting to go out but neither able to be left with anyone other than me or my husband on the regular. And of course, there’s the question of how we generate an income if one parent is eyes on child number 1 and the other parent is eyes on child number 2. We need more adult bodies on deck. There are some families that crack it and I have so much admiration for those that do but I suspect what we need are the elements of unschooling; it’s underlying principles but in a way that allows us access to the support we need. It’s a subtle concoction that is unique to our family and by heck we are becoming a strong little unit. I really love us and what we are striving to achieve.

6months ago our eldest was still grappling with anxiety and overwhelm and unable to contain the strength of his feelings in his ever growing body and this meant incredibly difficult moments of dysregulation which became impossible to manage alongside a four year old that needed safety and more of her Mummy than she’s been able to have in the past few years. We made the impossible decision to introduce medication to help our son be less overwhelmed by life and to help his mind calm a little bit to give space for the things he loves. This was not an easy decision to make. This was nights awake wondering if medicating our child at such a young age was morally the right thing to do? It was long stares over steaming hot cups of tea searching for the answer to keep our household calm and safe for all. It was reading, researching and having a child psychiatrist tell us we had done everything in our power to reduce demands on our child and that medication might be the next step. It was feeling like we’d failed as parents, it was feeling that we weren’t accepting our child in his raw, beautiful, like state. It was the hardest decision my husband and I have ever had to make.

6 months on and after a tumultuous titration journey, I feel the fog begin to clear and my son begin to settle. Initially we lost the parts of him that made him who he was, so we ditched some of the medication and now we have our child back. A child who is full of all the feelings but is able to cope with them with our support without the tsunami that flooded us all. I’ve made peace with our decision as I see the benefits it’s brought to everyone in our home.

And so new home, new possibilities, new outlook, a calmer sea on which to navigate. My typey fingers have started twitching so I’ll resume some sporadic musings of our crazy beautiful life. A journey that still looks so different from the rest. We are still doing life differently because that’s what we all need. We are still yet to find our place in the world and being incredibly honest some days I wish we could fit into the norm or fit into the plan that society lays out before us, trying to find a path that’s obscured from view is incredibly hard, incredibly tiring but I hope so rewarding in the end. So, for now we are trying things on for size until we find something that fits.

I feel the need to re-brand this page a little as really, we are not committing to any one way of living, just doing things in our own time and in our own way.

We continue to listen to ourselves and our children. Now is the season to find a path for my daughter whilst her brother begins to thrive in his low demand world. There is still much to achieve for my son as we fight for the support he needs, (possible tribunal incoming!!). But as my daughter approaches her fifth birthday, we need to make decisions on how her transition out of the early years might go. She has not settled into pre-school all wide-eyed and body on high alert and once again I grapple with the unease that mainstream education brings to my child’s body. I have a growing suspicion that this a space that doesn’t work for any of us. but it’s early days and she’s has been through a lot and so right now our time is spent working out which bits are trauma and which bits are her innate little being. So, I continue to listen to my daughter, going at her pace as we find a life that moulds neatly around her tiny frame and meets her where she’s at rather than a life that expects her to change her shape to fit in.

My husband goes to assessment soon and searches for clues as to what he needs to support him in life or how indeed we can shape life to fit him. I will always have his back; I see through his struggles and see the pure heart that lies beneath that is a rare find in today’s world. A precious gem to be polished and put on display for the world to see and admire, because he is stronger than so many people realise.

I am in the lead up to major surgery that I hope will give me back some springy lamb vibes to meet the world with an energy I’ve craved. I’ve been an exhausted shell of a human of late.

And so, I end with possibly the biggest lesson I’ve learnt over the last few years.

I’ve put said lesson in a big colourful passive-aggressive speech bubble in case the people at the back can’t see it (Government, here’s looking at you kid!!). That one sentence is literally becoming my gospel, the foundation upon which our family will base our lives upon. A philosophy that celebrates difference. This is a season for moulding the world to fit us, we will not break ourselves to fit, we will sculpt the walls around us, we will manipulate, carve, create, pull apart, tease out, weigh up, weigh down. We will have stolen moments for grown up chats, we will observe our children, I mean really observe, watch every reaction, every flinch and watch for their bodies begining to feel a safety that allows them to flourish. And once we have finished sculpting the environment we will settle there. We as parents will watch our own bodies begin to feel safe and then and only then will we have found the life that fits.